Dear Readers,
The Lantern has been the independent student voice of Ohio State since 1881. Historically, however, that voice has not always reflected the diverse community that encompasses our university.
Today, as the current climate and recent conversations surrounding race and discrimination have heightened, we have engaged in deep reflection and received feedback into how our own newsroom addresses these issues with regard to how we cover campus news and operate as a news organization. We acknowledge that in order to take the necessary steps to foster and create a more diverse and inclusionary newsroom, we must first take a look at ourselves and where we’ve fallen short.
To begin, we conducted a diversity survey to be as transparent as possible as to who is bringing you your news. About 80 percent of our staff members are white — at an institution that is about 65 percent white.
This needs to change.
As part of this initiative, The Lantern staff has devised a set of goals and actionable steps our organization can take to be more inclusive.
An area of improvement immediately identified by The Lantern is how we interact with our reporters and freelancers. We must incorporate them more fully into The Lantern — outside of the participation in class — and conduct additional surveys to fully address barriers to inclusivity.
In order to bring about our goals to promote a more inclusive newsroom today, and long after the staff or 2020-21 leaves, we pledge to do the following:
- Break down the perceived barrier between our reporting staff and the communities on whom we report in regard to race, gender and economic class; to that end are goals are to:
- Foster and initiate open and honest conversations about what it means to be diverse and inclusive in terms of acceptable and unacceptable practices.
- Allow and encourage a space for staff members with different identities to speak about best practices in coverage/discussion in the newsroom through several meetings per semester with all staff.
- Acknowledge differences in identities and the ways in which those identities affect work and life
- Foster and initiate open and honest conversations about what it means to be diverse and inclusive in terms of acceptable and unacceptable practices.
Recruit and make welcome all students.
- Actively recruit journalists of color and other marginalized voices to apply for all editing positions.
- Promote our editorial and reporter job openings to a wider audience, including through email newsletter and social media.
- Engage in community outreach by contacting community and organization leaders and encourage engagement in The Lantern.
- Make pathways to submitting editorials and opinion pieces more obvious through a Lantern submission portal.
- Reach out to students in disciplines beyond School of Communication and journalism majors in order to get more diverse perspectives on news content.
Form a lasting relationship with diverse campus community groups.
- Offer community events to discuss local issues and invite guest speakers
- The Lantern would act as the host
- Asking for feedback from community
- Make a plan to reach out to various student organizations representing different interests. Meet with group leaders to discuss Lantern coverage.
- Create a more casual channel of communication with readers, which could include social media posts and direct messages to feedback or a reader survey.
- Engage with members of Columbus community
- Encourage reporters and editors to engage with organizations providing community resources (mental health services, legal aid society, food pantries, etc.)
- Provide reporting on Columbus-related stories.
- Professional partners
- Implement a mentorship program beginning this semester between Lantern editors and reporters for more of a 1:1 relationship to help combat the sentiment of elitism and exclusivity within the newsroom.
- Be clear and transparent about the makeup of our newsroom in the form of a semesterly demographics survey of the staff to be released to the public.
- Host training and educational sessions for staff members and reporters about reporting on different communities, including professional organizations invited to speak.
- Some specific “reporting on” training sessions ideas:
- Black community
- Latino community
- South Asian community
- LGBTQ+ community
- Disabled issues (and communities within the disability community)
- Sexual violence
- Mental health and illness
- Addiction
- Some specific “reporting on” training sessions ideas:
- Encourage cross-collaboration between desks and value the input of every staff member.
- Weekly idea meetings for everyone to share possible story ideas no matter what the desk or department, which will be monitored and measured for the results.
- Ensure that all points of view are welcome in the newsroom by being mindful of inappropriate conversation.
Our internal audit has revealed a number of areas of improvement within our staffing.
Below is a demographic breakdown of our 30-person staff based on their anonymous responses to a demographics survey. Not every question was required for staff members to answer and only 29 members responded to the survey, so total responses do not equal 30.
Thirteen staff members identify as male with 16 members identifying as female. Three staff members are Black or African American, 23 members are white, one member identified as Asian, one member identified as being Middle Eastern/Arab and one member identified as being from multiple races.
About a fifth of our staff come from low-income households, two-fifths from middle-income households, and two-fifths from upper-income households. Eighteen staff members identify as straight or heterosexual; two are gay/lesbian/homosexual, and eight identify as bisexual. Ten staffers are from multiple groups that are typically underserved by institutions and journalists, such as being a Black female coming from a low-income household, or a White female who identifies as bisexual with a disability.
The majority of our staff comes from the Midwest, with only four members coming from the South or Northeast. Two members come from counties in Appalachia.
Ten staff members noted they have been diagnosed with one or more long-lasting or chronic conditions (physical, visual, auditory, cognitive or mental, emotional, or other) that substantially limits one or more of their major life activities, such as their ability to see, hear, or speak; to learn, remember, or concentrate.
In addition to demographics, the survey asked several climate questions to assess The Lantern as a workplace. The majority of staff members have been at The Lantern for less than a year and marked that they are “comfortable” or “mostly comfortable” with expressing disagreement with executive decisions. Twenty-three members said they experienced fatigue, distress or mental health disruptions as a result of their work at The Lantern (16 “sometimes” or “occasionally” experience these disruptions, seven “often” experience these disruptions). Sixteen members said they felt their work was valued by other members of the staff — ten marked “maybe” and three marked “no.”
For 140 years, we have been the voice and record of Ohio State and as the university changes and grows, so should we. Today, we commit ourselves to change — ultimately to better represent and serve the Ohio State community.
Sincerely,
The Lantern Staff 2020-21
Please share your questions, comments, or suggestions for how The Lantern can improve with [email protected].
